Teutonic Mythology by Viktor Rydberg

Author:Viktor Rydberg [Rydberg, Viktor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mythology, Norse, Mythology, Germanic, Northmen -- Legends
Published: 2015-02-22T08:00:00+00:00

a stronger power which has also made a claim on them. This power is firm in its resolutions against Egil (s/> ndr d fostv/m /><//•/■ & hendi mfr); but, at the same time, it is lenient toward his children, and bestows on them the lot of happiness. The mythic person who possesses this power is by the skald called F<his hrosta hUm/i/r, "the lord of Fdnn's brewing".

Fdnn is a mythical serpent- and dragon-name (Younger Edda, ii. 4S7, 570). The serpent or dragon which possessed this name in the myths or sagas must have been one which was engraved or painted somewhere. This is evident from the word itself, which is a contraction of fdinn, engraved, painted (cp. Egilsson's Lex. Poet, and Vigfusson's Diet., sub voce). Its character as such does not hinder it from being endowed with a magic life (see below). The object on which it was engraved or painted must have been a drinking-horn, whose contents (brewing) is called by Egil Fauns, either because the serpent encircled the horn which contained the drink, or because the horn, on which it was engraved, was named after it. In no other way can the expression, Fdnn's brewing, be explained, for an artificial serpent or dragon is neither the one who brews the drink nor the malt from which it is brewed.

The possessor of the horn, embellished with Fdnn's image, is the mythical person who, to Egil's vexation, has insisted on the claim of the lower world to his sons. If the skald has paraphrased correctly, that is to say, if he has produced a paraphrase which refers to the character here in question of the person indicated by the paraphrase, then it follows that "Fdnn's brewing" and Fdnn himself, like their possessor, must have been in some way connected with the lower world.

From the mythic tradition in Gudrunarkvida (ii.), we already know that a serpent, " a long heath-fish," is engraved and painted on the subterranean horn, whose sorrow-allaying mead is composed of the liquids of the three Hades-fountains.

When King Gorm {Hist. Dan., 427; cp. No. 40) made his journey of discovery in the lower world, he saw a vast ox-horn [ingens bubali eornu) there. It lay near the gold-clad mead-cisterns, the fountains of the lower world. Its purpose of being tilled with their liquids is sufficiently clear from its location. We are also told that it was carved with figures {nee ccelatura art vacuum), like the subterranean horn in Gudrunarkvida. One of

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